19 Oct Selecting the right insurance
Insurance is all about protecting what you have now and what you need to have in the event of the unexpected.
Understand what is right for you
As you travel through life, the protection you need is likely to change.
The key to selecting the right insurance is understanding your present needs and making sure you have both the right sort and level of cover.
Being over-insured is a waste of money, but it is also a financial risk to have too little insurance in place. With this in mind, let’s look at the types of insurance that may be particularly relevant to each life stage.
Just starting out
If you’re just starting out in your career, you probably recognise that it is important to insure valuable assets such as your car.
Your most valuable asset however, is your ability to earn an income over your lifetime. As your income starts to rise, or you take on more debt, such as a home loan, it becomes more critical to have the right levels of income protection insurance and possibly life cover in place.
The family years
Once you have a partner, and potentially begin a family, life and TPD insurance becomes especially important. It is essential for your family to be able to survive financially if you were to pass away unexpectedly, or become permanently disabled. Even if only one of you is working, it’s important for both parents to have appropriate life and TPD cover in place – not just the major bread winner.
While raising a family, our financial commitments are often at their highest. This makes income protection insurance particularly important.
As you age, the likelihood of experiencing medical conditions such as heart attack increases, making living insurance worthwhile. Living insurance will provide an additional lump sum to assist with medical and other costs in the event of serious illness or injury.
Empty nest
More Australians are choosing to work until much later in life, and if that sounds like you, income protection insurance remains relevant until you hang up your work boots.
While your children may have grown up and be establishing lives of their own, life insurance can continue to play an important role.
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